My debut novel, The Trouble With Being God, has been out for a few months now and, while I am spending some of my time promoting it, I’m also busy with writing my next book. The Trouble With Being God was absolutely a great learning experience. In total, it took me nearly eight years to create, from inception to final publication. During that time I learned a lot about people, life, and writing – but in the time since publishing it I’ve learned a lot more about how to write a great book. Mostly this is due to the feedback I’ve been receiving from readers and fellow authors (in particular, Monica Valentinelli), and although I feel The Trouble With Being God was by no means a bad book, I am absolutely certain I can do better.
This brings us to what I’m doing now. As you may recall, back in November I mentioned that I was working on a book called The Grabbing Hands as a project for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Well, that project has grown a lot from where it originally started, and has since morphed into something I am extremely excited about: The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr. David S. Sparks. This new book is definitely a departure from the dark gore that spattered the pages of TTWBG, but it still very much feels like a “me” kind of story – heavy with philosophical questions (in particular environmental and biological ethics, as well as my usual themes of questions of self, soul and purpose), and in its current state falls quite firmly in the realm of cyberpunk fiction.
